Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Corona virus

  • Regalia

    Nancy L. HagoodCharleston, South Carolina, United States My medical school graduation regalia has hung in my closet for two years. It will never be worn. In spring 2019, I was a fourth-year medical student, planning to graduate in May and move 500 miles north to work as an intern at my first-choice residency program. After…

  • Animality revisited in times of the coronavirus: A fable

    Frank Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Imagine, as painters have done, representatives of animal species congregated in an assembly (Fig. 1). A man comes to address this motley crowd in this way: “You guys [he purposefully adopts this condescending language] have recently wronged us. Let me start by reminding you that you did not discover fire;…

  • Locked down!

    P. Ravi ShankarKuala Lumpur, Malaysia The sun was about to rise on another day of lockdown. At the beginning of a new day there is a vague sense of optimism, but that is followed by an overwhelming sense of tiredness, ennui, and crushed hopes at the thought of being confined within our apartment. My brother…

  • Plagues and prejudice

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States It was a calm, clear January morning on the gritty streets of paradise. Honolulu, the capital of the newly-annexed U.S. territory of Hawaii, was ushering out a century of upheaval that had included the arrival of explorers, missionaries, and deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles; the overthrow of…

  • Reporting a pandemic

    Francis ChristianSaskatoon, Canada Dust to dust and doom delivered by newscasts dripping irony in considered doses of despair; feigning knowledge of ignorance, feigning ignorance of absent panic and knowledge from experts claiming uncertainty. But the web of knowledge weaves chiffoned layers for me and you and John, openly uncertain, uncertainly open to imperfect measure of…

  • Washing our hands

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ever since Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, washed his hands before condemning Jesus Christ to death by crucifixion, this simple act of personal sanitation has been used as the figurative icon of a disclaimer, the denial of responsibility. Today, in the climate of the current COVID-19 pandemic, handwashing is not…

  • Unmasked

    Kelley ZhaoStony Brook, New York, United States The lecture hall was freezing on the first day of medical school orientation. The room was buzzing with students meeting one another, and the familiar phrases floated around me as I took my seat. “Where are you from?” “Where did you go for college?” Half of the students…

  • La couronne

    Sophia WilsonNew Zealand Virions, under an electron microscope, resemble a crown.An artist’s soft hued roses and golds,belie the sinister underbelly, the forked tongue. Everything suddenly looks a whole lot different; Today an elderly woman inclined overwalking frame, inches down supermarket aislesin search of weekly staples, not agile enough to dodge another’s cough,nor equipped to stockpileor…

  • Epidemics from plague to Coronavirus

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States Throughout history humanity has faced many epidemics and pandemics that caused panic and massive casualties. Although in modern times pathogens have shifted from bacteria to viruses, each new epidemic brings back fears of diseases from the past such as bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, and leprosy. Society has usually responded to…